Oliver Otis Howard, the general commanding the Department of the Columbia, was the officer responsible for the 1877 conflict from the army’s perspective.

Howard is a complicated historical figure.

He had a reputation as a man of genuine moral seriousness — he had been an advocate for the rights of Black Americans during Reconstruction, and he was one of the founders of Howard University, the historically Black institution in Washington.

His critics, however, including some of his own officers, found him rigid, moralistic, and poor at the kind of flexible tactical decision-making that pursuit of the nimíipuu required.

Howard’s initial approach to the 1877 crisis had been forceful: the thirty-day deadline, the arrest of Toohoolhoolzote, the uncompromising insistence on reservation confinement.